


Lost in the Family

by Harper21



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: Alpha Lexa (The 100), Alpha Lincoln (The 100), Alpha Luna, Alpha Octavia Blake, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, F/F, F/M, Family Drama, Family Secrets, Gen, M/M, Omega Becca, Omega Clarke Griffin, Omega Gaia, Omega Raven Reyes, Omega Verse, Teen Pregnancy, Teen Romance, Werewolves, alpha madi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:07:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25277404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harper21/pseuds/Harper21
Summary: Omegaverse Werewolf AUMadi Griffin is a young alpha growing up in a picture-perfect family, full of doctors and engineers that surround her with as much love and affection as they have the time to muster.Despite it all she feels isolated,  interested only in athletics while her mother constantly pushes for more and the family she loves and that loves her back hides a dark secret behind its idyllic veneer.
Relationships: Abby Griffin/Jake Griffin, Abby Griffin/Marcus Kane, Anya/Becca (The 100), Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Clarke Griffin/Niylah, Costia/Lexa (The 100), Finn Collins/Clarke Griffin, Gaia & Madi (The 100), Gustus/Indra (The 100), Jasper Jordan/Maya Vie, Luna/Raven Reyes, Octavia Blake/Lincoln
Comments: 5
Kudos: 25





	Lost in the Family

**Author's Note:**

> Mention of underage sex and teen pregnancy

Madi Griffin’s fourteenth birthday starts off early, six am on a chilly Saturday.

“Madi, wake up,” her mother says after kissing the back of her head, kneeling by her bedside and rubbing her shoulder.  
“It’s my birthday, Momma, can’t I sleep in?”  
“You have guests coming, Madi, you need to be ready.”  
And that’s the end of the discussion.  
So as her mother scurries out her door, Madi rises out of bed wrapped in an embarrassingly pink blanket and yawns. It’s the kind of pink no alpha her age would ever wear, but it just so happens to belong to her sister. After two years of her sister living on the other side of the country, Madi finds comfort in the faint scent of her in the old blanket.  
She stays cocooned in pink and yellow polka dots until she enters the shower.  
A quick scrub and a change of clothes later and Madi wanders downstairs. At the foot of the winding staircase she spots Raven reclining on the living room couch with a mug of coffee nestled in her hands. More specifically, reclining on her mate, who is splayed out on the couch, snoring softly under waves of reddish brown curls.  
Raven Reyes may not share her name, but she is a part of the family. Her second sister as far as Madi is concerned and the sight of her sleepy-eyed and using Luna’s mop of hair as a pillow brings a smile to her face.  
“Raven!” She says, whispering mid syllable when the older brunette holds a finger up against her lips.  
“Heya, Squirt,” Raven whispers back, taking a sip of her black coffee as she motions Madi to come closer.  
The little alpha pads over to her and leans in for a hug.  
“Happy Birthday, Mads.”  
“Thanks, Rae,” Madi says, snuggling further into the omega’s shoulder. “I missed you so much!”  
She keeps up the whisper and pulls out of her sister’s arms wondering why.  
Because of their size difference, Raven is sitting up on her mate’s stomach with the back of her head resting against her face, and if that isn’t affecting the Alpha’s sleep then nothing will.  
The couple had met almost a decade ago in college, when Raven was nineteen and Luna was twenty one. They were in the same bio class as Raven was already a junior after graduating high school at sixteen.  
“What’s up with Luna?”  
“She’s just tuckered out from last night,” Raven says, looking back and patting what she thinks is the Alpha’s cheek with affection. “Give her a few hours and she’ll be up and about.”  
Madi grimaces as she sniffs the air, fixating on the only other alpha’s scent in the house.  
“Eww, Raven, you guys didn’t… do it on the couch did-?!”  
“Keep it down, Pipsqueak,” the older brunette says with her hand over Madi’s mouth, glancing away to make sure her mother is still busy in the kitchen. “I was talking about the drive over last night, but if you really want to know- we did in the car before we came in, your mom would kill me if she scented us on her couch.”  
Madi pulls out of the omega’s reach and fakes a gag.  
“Don’t- I don’t want to know! Gross!”  
“Mmmm- what’s gross?” Luna says groggily, blowing apart coiled tendrils of hair from her lips as she wraps an arm around her mate’s sweater clad chest.  
“Madi’s still learning the birds and the bee’s,” Raven says, turning her face around to kiss the alpha’s thick lips, “go back to sleep, Seadog.”  
“Happy b-day, kid,” Luna says, almost too softly to hear before drifting off with a gentle snore.  
Raven watches her sleep with a sad smile on her lips  
“She was out for nearly a month, barely off the boat before we hopped in the car to come up here.”  
“Doesn’t she own all those boats, why is she going out if she’s got people who work for her to do it?”  
The omega’s smile turns into a thin line as she looks back at the little alpha with an upraised brow.  
“She’s the captain, Squirt,” Raven says simply, dropping the subject in her usual way. “You better go help your mom before she flips out on you.”  
“Fine.”  
Madi lets it go and turns to leave, before whipping back around with a growl.  
“And stop calling me Squirt, I’m almost as tall as y- she’s here!”  
Through the window over the omega’s head she spots a rental car pulling up in the driveway and bolts away without another word, flinging open the front door and racing out just as her mother pokes her head out of the kitchen to call out to her.  
“Madi, wait, put your shoes on-!”  
But she’s too far gone, running barefoot on the slick asphalt toward the woman emerging from the passenger side of the car and leaping into her arms.  
“Clarke!!!”  
“Birthday girl!” Clarke says, beaming as brightly as the girl in her arms despite having to stagger back from her weight.  
After a minute holding each other, Clarke tries to pull back, but Madi refuses to yield her grip, burying her face into the blonde’s shoulder.  
“Oof, you got so big,” the older woman says into her ear, squeezing her harder before rubbing her back soothingly. “What are you like a foot taller now?”  
“Maybe,” Madi says with her face still buried against the fabric of Clarke's jacket. “It’s been long enough.”  
Clarke cringes lightly as she coaxes the alpha’s head back and runs her fingers through dark curls.  
“I know, baby girl, I’m so sorry, it’s just all been so hectic, I literally just got Jake on the bottle.”  
Madi is just about to protest when she hears the trunk of the car pop open and side eyes the figure emerging from the driver’s side, thinking it’s her sister’s husband. But instead it’s Niylah, her sister’s friend from medical school, who peeks her head up over the hood, giving the girl a wave and birthday greeting as she heads to the back to pull out their luggage.  
“Where _is_ my nephew, and that beta who helped make him?”  
“Ha, ha, you’re such a riot,” Clarke says, throwing an arm around the alpha’s head and ruffling her hair. “Just don’t let mom hear you when you talk like that, OK?”  
Madi wraps an arm around Clarke’s back as they walk together up the driveway while Niylah follows behind them, slinging two suitcases over her shoulders with ease and smiling at the display of sibling affection.  
“I left my boys back home because if I’m going back to twenty-four hour shifts I need to know Finn can handle Jay on his own, they both wished you happy birthday by the way.”  
“Yeah, right,” Madi says, half a smile on her lips as her sister pinches her cheek.  
“In a few years she’ll be like a foot taller than me, right, Niy?”  
“Future heartbreaker,” Niylah says, nodding along with the other omega. “A strong alpha too, I can sense it.”  
Both sisters look back at the blonde’s friend with curious expressions before Clarke turns back to whisper in the alpha’s ear.  
“Niylah knows what she’s talking about, her people are more.. ‘Old-fashioned traditional’ types.”  
“I can hear you, Clarke.”  
Madi hides her face in her hand as Clarke reaches back to pluck a suitcase from the other omega’s shoulder in apology.  
The concept of a strong alpha is alien to her and the family she lovingly calls hers is about as nontraditional as one could find. In the Griffin family alpha’s aren’t overvalued like they are everywhere else and her father made sure to remind her of it before he died, but he didn’t get a chance to teach her much else. He left her alone in a house full of omegas, with a strict mother and two overachieving sisters who were already adults by the time she reached childhood.  
Her mother certainly does her best but even now as she opens the front door and stands in front of them with her hands on her hips, she exudes that typical sternness that makes her difficult to approach.  
“Madi, did you offer to help with the bags?” She says, giving the two omegas a smile almost as an afterthought.  
“No, Momma.”  
Madi sighs and takes their bags as Clarke and Niylah hug her mother and step into the house. She starts to follow them in but her mother blocks the doorway.  
“There’s a pound of onions we still need to cut before I start cooking, make sure you use the cut glove, OK?”  
“Yes, Momma.”  
Madi sighs again, she’ll be doing a lot of that today, and drops the two suitcases at the bottom of the staircase before heading into the kitchen.  
“How was the flight in, girls?”  
“Loud, wasn’t it, Niy?” Clarke says as she unwraps her scarf and hangs it by the door, flashing a knowing look to Madi over the breakfast bar. “Left my boy home and got stuck in a flight full of weaning infants, has to be some karma at work there.”  
“Try doing it twice,” Niylah says, hanging up her coat and giving the blonde a rueful smile.  
“Oh, no, I forgot what a sacrifice Niylah made coming over to visit her best friend and her best friend’s precious little joy!”  
Clarke takes her friend’s face in her hands and kisses her fake pout, teasing her some more as Madi looks up from the drawer she sifting through and back at them.  
“Niylah went all the way to California? Why do that when you were already coming here?”  
“Madi, don’t be nosy.”  
Clarke pacifies their mother by wrapping an arm around her and Niylah and sandwiching between them.  
“She had a few extra days free and wanted to hang out with me and Jake,” Clarke says, resting her head against her friend’s and then her mother’s, and back and forth. “We had just enough time to show her a little around the city.”  
“Sounds like fun,” Madi says, going back to the drawer and slamming it closed when she finds the glove. A lot more fun than hosting a hundred strangers in the backyard, she thinks.  
“Looks like she just went for that Cali sun,” Raven says, coming out of the living room and joining the group hug with a smile and outstretched arms. “And it looks like you’re actively avoiding it, princess.”  
Clarke fakes a laugh and accepts a kiss on the cheek as Raven rests her chin on her shoulder.  
“Bite me, Reyes, I have my daddy’s skin.”  
“You have your daddy’s everything,” her mother says with a smile, giving voice to Madi’s own thoughts.

They sound a little more bitter in her head.  
“Papa Griff at least had a farmer’s tan,” Raven says, reaching over the blonde’s shoulder to drop her empty mug into her hands before giving Niylah an appreciative look over imaginary ray bans.  
“Did I mention you look good with a little color on your cheeks?”  
Clarke tosses the mug back and elbows Raven away while Niylah simply smiles.  
“You’re lucky Luna sleeps like the dead, or she’d give you a little color on _your_ cheeks.”  
“Gross, Niy!” Clarke says, catching on before Madi does while their mother just backs away with her arms crossed. “Not in front of my baby sister, it’s bad enough what she hears from Raven.”  
“I’ve been imparting nothing but wisdom on the kid, princess.”  
“Wisdom my a-”  
“Girls, enough please,” their mother says with her hands up, silencing the house without even raising her voice.  
“Raven, try to wake up Luna and bring her to your room, that couch is not good for her back, you know that. Clarke, I made up the guest room for Niylah tonight so show her up and make sure she’s comfortable then get yourself unpacked. I’m going to need help with the caterers and Madi, chop those onions!”  
Madi grumbles to herself as everyone scurries to comply with the family matriarch.  
By the time Clarke comes back downstairs, the little alpha is leaning on the counter peeling off the last of the onion skins, already teary-eyed from the irritants on her fingers.  
“Let me give you a hand, baby girl,” her sister says, pulling out another cutting board from beneath the counter and setting up next to her.  
Madi doesn’t bother to look up as she slips on the cut glove and pulls out the sharpest knife they have. Clarke pilfers it so she takes out another.  
They start cutting the onions in half, working in silence for a few minutes before Clarke nudges her with her hip. Madi puts the knife down and stares at the wall.  
“Why are we even doing this when she hired a caterer?”  
Clarke smiles and hip checks her again.  
“Caterings for the party, this is for your Birthday dinner, you know Mom loves cooking your favorites on your birthday.”  
“Yeah, she loves making me work on my birthday, too,” Madi says, picking the knife back up before her sister stops her.  
“In case you didn’t realize it, the family’s all here and the sun isn’t even up yet. She raised us all the same way.”  
“Yeah right,” Madi grumbles, rubbing her eyes with the back of her arm as Clarke wanders away to dig through a cupboard by the fridge. “It’s like she was a different person when- wait, what are you doing?”  
Her sister finishes looking through several cupboards before she settles for an empty mop bucket from a stack under the sink.  
“This is clean, right?”  
Madi nods and watches puzzled as Clarke pushes the piles of onions over the counter and into the bucket.  
“Get a bag of ice from the garage and fill it to the top of the bucket, OK? Then fill it with water.”  
“Why would I do that?”  
“Because your eyes are red as hell and the ice water will dampen the enzymes in the onions that make them like that.”  
Clarke pushes the bucket into Madi’s hands and walks back to the sink to wash her hands.  
“OK, cool,” Madi says after a moment, looking down at the bucket and feeling its weight. “But why do I have to do it?”  
Her sister turns around to lean back against the counter with a smile.  
“Because you’re stronger than I am, dummy,” she says after peeking over her shoulder to make sure Raven isn’t within earshot.  
“I’m telling her you said that,” Madi says with a grin, dashing toward the garage as her sister chases behind, yelling threats and G rated curses at her back.  
She reaches the garage, closing the door in the blonde’s face and locking it, before filling the bucket with ice from the big freezer  
Clarke calls out from behind the door to hurry up and Madi just rolls her eyes as she heads outside to use the hose.  
When she gets back to the kitchen holding the bucket she makes sure to pull it up and down, flexing her bicep to mock the blonde waiting for her.  
“Momma says alpha’s aren’t inherently stronger than omega’s, so you can’t be using that as an excuse, Clarke.”  
Clarke just smirks at the display. Forty or so pounds of ice water isn’t much on its own, but the young teen is holding it like it’s nothing at all.  
“Don’t get a big head, baby sis,” Clarke says, pointing her to put it down on the counter, “but you’re not like regular alphas, plus you’re the only Griffin who’s ever played an actual sport.”  
Madi is about to mention Raven, who is in the gym as much as she is, until she remembers the old yearbook in the attic with the picture of her boyish-looking father in his varsity uniform.  
“Didn’t Papa play football?”  
Clarke snorts.  
“ _Barely_ , he was in his own words, ‘mediocre’ and Mom made him give it up as soon as she met him.”  
Clarke sets the oven timer for an hour and looks back at her sister with a bit of pride in her eyes.  
“Nope, you’re a talent all your own,” she says, crossing her arms as Madi sets about cleaning the counters. “Mom says she’s getting calls from the coach at Arkadia, says they’re dying for you to be on the soccer team and Octavia told me- “  
“You talked to Octavia?!”  
Clarke puts her hands up and smiles.  
“Relax, Mom doesn’t know, though you might want to tell her if you’re really planning on training with O in her gym, she’s going to find out eventually.”  
“Yeah right,” Madi says with a roll of her eyes. “She already hates the fact I’m in so many sports, you think she’d be in any way OK with me fighting?”  
“Then maybe don’t call it fighting,” Clarke says, ruffling her sister’s hair when she gives her a skeptical look. “Call it self-defense or something, be creative, Mom will go for it if you sell it.”  
Madi drops a cutting board carelessly into the sink and huffs.  
“You don’t know Momma like I do,” she says, turning her back to the sink to give the blonde a hard look despite the sympathetic smile on her lips. “She’s different with me than when you and Raven were growing- “  
“Girls, the caterers will be here by nine, we need to get the back ready!!”  
Their mother’s voice carries throughout the house as she descends the stairs, with Raven and Niylah in tow.  
Clarke gives Madi a quick hug and promises to talk to her later before they join the others heading outside.

Madi’s party goes as well as she expects, nearly a hundred people come out, most of them people she barely recognizes. Her mother’s coworkers, hospital donors and old ‘high society’ friends, people she will never see again until the next party.  
Her own friends can’t attend.  
Her mother is fine with kids from her fancy little private school coming, but Madi isn’t friends with any of them. The only kids she hangs out with are on the various teams she plays for, basketball, soccer and lacrosse, most of them alphas and too ‘rowdy’ for her mother’s taste.  
Her only salvation is in the company of her sister’s friends.  
Bellamy gets there first, promising his sister, Octavia is on her way. Then Jasper and Monty, and then Murphy, Miller and Monroe, all of Clarke’s old friends who would’ve been considered too ‘rowdy’ if they were Madi’s.  
They all settle by the pool, covered over per her mother's instructions, and wish her happy birthday and Jasper slips her a few twenties in lieu of an actual gift.

Octavia shows an hour into the party with her boyfriend, an alpha ‘too beautiful and chiseled not to be made of marble’, as Raven likes to say. And he brings a friend.  
“Holy shit,” Jasper says with his drink caught halfway to his lips. “It’s her!”  
“Who?” Madi says as Jasper’s mate, Maya elbows him gently for the swear.  
He’s too fixated on the woman walking with Lincoln to be too bothered by it.  
“Somebody your sister hates, like really really-”  
He stops himself after getting another elbow in the gut from Maya and turns to look at Madi.  
“Look, kid, just go talk to her will ya? I’ve gotta go distract Clarke before all hell breaks loose.”  
Madi doesn’t have time to question him before he darts off, so she heads over to Octavia.  
“What’s up, Birthday girl?”  
“Nothing much, jerk,” Madi says, smacking away Octavia’s hand before she can ruffle her hair.  
“That’s Sensei Jerk to you now, kid,” the older alpha says, before looking back at her mate and the woman with them. “Link, you want to introduce your friend?”  
Lincoln takes her hand he’s holding and kisses it while wishing Madi a happy birthday.  
“Madi, this is my packmate, Anya,” he says, turning toward the alpha nearly as tall as him. “She’s going to be one of your new coaches at Arkadia High.”  
“Packmate?”  
The three alphas in front of her share a look, somewhat amused that it’s the first thing Madi picks up.  
“He means we’re like family,” Anya says with a hand on Lincoln’s shoulder, giving him a smirk before looking down at the younger alpha. “And like he said, I just started at Arkadia and I heard you’re about to start- ”  
“Like family or actual family?”  
“Jesus, Mads,” Octavia says with a sigh and a slap upside her head, “enough with the third degree already! Anya saw you kick ass at the gym and she was about to sing your praises, so chill.”  
Madi says nothing as she stares up into the stranger alpha’s almond eyes and studies her closely. She has sharp features, willowy but well built, a little older than Lincoln as far as she can tell, maybe closer to forty. Some might call her-  
“Hot Damn!”  
Raven’s wolf whistle erupts right beside her ear and Madi flashes a glare at her as she wraps an arm around her shoulder.  
“If I wasn’t already taken,” Raven says into her ear, not even bothering to whisper, “I would climb that like a tree. Now don't be rude, introduce me to your new friend, Squirt.”  
Madi ducks out of her arm while Octavia looks about ready to throttle her. Lincoln just rolls his eyes but the alpha beside him gives Raven a strange look.  
“We’ve already met, Raven,” Anya says with a smirk as Lincoln holds back his mate. “You were pretty young though, and high, very high.”  
“Oh shit!” Raven says, her eyes wide in recognition as she looks at Anya and then Octavia. “It's her! She was your counselor at that fucked up Lord of the Flies camp- ”  
“Raven, shut up!”  
“The what-camp?!”  
“Nothing!” The omega says suddenly, pulling away just out of Octavia’s reach and looking at Madi with an uneasy smile. “Forget I said anything, O and Clarke were with me at Space Camp, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about- oh look, Luna’s up from her nap, bye!”  
And so Raven scurries away, dragging her mate, who has been awake for over an hour with her by the collar back inside the house.  
Madi turns back to Anya with a glare, ready and willing to demand answers when the older alpha speaks first.  
“I was hoping to get a minute to talk to Madi alone.”  
Lincoln and Octavia share a look before excusing themselves for some punch and finger sandwiches.  
Anya waves at them as they go and pulls the little alpha out of the back yard, just past the gate fence.  
“Is this where you tell me what the hell’s up with you and my sister?”  
The taller alpha just gives her that fox-like smile and crosses her arms.  
“No,” she says, peeking over the gate to observe the wandering party-goers as though suddenly wary of being seen. “This is where I tell you to start playing for your new school.”  
“Nice deflection, but I’m not playing for another snooty prep school.”  
Madi is about to turn away when she feels the older alpha’s hand on her shoulder. It’s a strong grip, firm but gentle enough not to set her off.  
“Arkadia is changing for the better, new management along with new coaches. And Octavia told me about your other commitments, our season won’t conflict with theirs, except the spring but we’ll work around that. ”  
“Whatever,” Madi says, bucking her shoulder to dislodge that grip and failing. “I’ll think about it.”  
“Promise you will,” Anya says, her wary gaze locked on a figure approaching them from the back yard, “I’m having soccer tryouts the day before orientation, the rest on the weekend after, I’ll see you there. Happy Birthday, by the way.”  
The older Alpha gives her one last smile, takes a small pouch out of her coat pocket and drops it into her hand. She walks away without another word just as Madi’s mother opens the fence gate.  
“Madi, baby, we’re all ready for you to open-”  
She makes an abrupt stop and catches sight of the willowy alpha walking down the driveway.  
“Madi, who was that?!”  
“Octavia and Lincoln’s friend, Momma,” Madi says, somehow mindful enough not to reveal Anya as the coach her mother had talked to on the phone.  
She slips the pouch into her pocket, curious of its content, but not enough to earn her mother’s wrath.  
“Get back to the party,” her mother says, glaring at that retreating figure one last time before turning her attention to her daughter. “We’ll talk about this later.”  
Madi knows she’s not angry about her talking to a relative stranger, it’s because Anya is an alpha.  
Her mother seems to only hate the alphas that got close to her daughters or their friends. Luna’s introduction to the family is the first she can actually remember.  
Abby loathed Luna, almost forbade her from the house and that was before even meeting her. Madi thinks back on the screaming matches between her mother and Raven over the phone, all the threats of taking her out of school, forbidding her from coming home, or even speaking to her again.  
Her mother even questioned the whole story of the couple’s meeting.  
‘Why is a fisherwoman even getting a business degree in the first place?!’  
Suffice it to say, those were a difficult few months, and might have been years if Clarke hadn’t arranged the meeting and Luna hadn’t managed to charm their mother and ailing father.  
So Madi just bites her tongue and follows her mother back. She ducks her head with a blush as she notices the hundred or so guests forming a crescent around the table bearing her gifts, feeling even younger than her fourteen years as she tails her mother like a little duckling.  
Her mother makes sure to tell her who each present is from before she opens it and she makes sure to thank them after.  
They’re mostly all clothes, too expensive for her taste, but she’ll have to wear them whenever she’s around these people. And her mother promises her she’ll be around them more and more as she’s grown old enough to attend all those stuffy hospital benefit parties.  
She gets a few toys from the family and friends who still look at her as ‘Clarke’s kid sister’ and video games she can only play in Octavia’s office at the back of her gym.  
The younger Blake herself gives her athletic wear and a sleek looking sports bottle that she swears will last her a lifetime. Raven almost immediately one ups her with a brand new laptop and she makes sure to teasingly rub her face in it while excusing the large purchase to Abby as a school necessity.  
The last present is from her mother and she wheels it out of the house to show her after the table is clear. It’s a bike, a nice bike, the kind Mercy General’s Chief of Medicine could easily afford.  
She presents it to Madi with a smile and addresses her guests.  
“For the girl who has seemingly everything, she’s still two years away from the one thing I know she wants most. So until that time comes, I can still give my baby a way to get around that won’t affect my blood pressure!”  
She ends her speech holding up the helmet hanging from the bicycle handlebar and gets a good laugh from the crowd. She hands it to her daughter with a hug and whispers in her ear.  
“Don’t grow up too fast, okay, hon?”  
“Thank you, Momma,” Madi says, accepting a kiss on her forehead with a slow, yet loving smile.  
The party winds down after that, with a cake separate from the one her mother baked, for all the guests not staying for dinner. By the time they all leave with their bellies full of catering, the evening is setting in and dinner's nearly ready. Madi cleans up all the discarded plastic left over with the help of the Blake siblings until they’re all called in for a much more pleasant party than the one that preceded it.  
And as the real cake is set down in front of her, its fourteen lights sparkling in the darkened dining room, illuminating all the smiling faces singing her ‘Happy Birthday’, Madi sighs.  
Happily this time, warm and content with the family that’s more often apart than together.  
It’s only after the night is over and her family has all retired or left that Madi remembers the pouch in her pocket.  
Clarke volunteers to clean the dishes and shoo’s their mother up the stairs to sleep so Madi insists on helping her. While her sister is in the kitchen, the little alpha clears the dining room table, takes out the pouch and drops its contents on her palm.  
“What the hell?”  
A bead, an onyx stone as black as the void and shaped like a wheel. It’s thin and tiny but feels immeasurably heavy in her palm, and warm, too much so to be just the warmth of her pocket.  
She holds it up to the lit chandelier and wonders why it fails to catch any light.  
Her phone buzzes on the table and she looks back to the kitchen to make sure her sister can’t see her as she slips the bead back into her pocket.  
Her sister always texts when it’s late, it’s one of those childhood lessons their mother saw fit to teach all of them. She asks her to come into the kitchen and the question of just what the hell this total stranger’s gift really is slips into the back of her mind.  
Clarke puts the last dish on the drying rack and turns back to her with a smile, looking too much like their mother wrapped in her pink silk night robe.  
“You OK, bug?”  
Madi tries to hide her smile behind a grimace. Anyone else calling her that would get an earful but Clarke is different.  
“I'm fine, thanks for- did you go to Space Camp?”  
Her sister snorts out a laugh as Madi looks down with a blush, cursing her own randomness.  
“Uhm, I’m not sure, weirdo,” Clarke says, pushing a lock of blonde hair behind her ear as she seriously ponders the question. “I think I might have tried it out with Raven at some point, but most of my summers were spent volunteering at Mom’s hospital. Why do you ask, did you want to- ?”  
“No, no, that’s not- I mean I was just… curious I guess, never- never mind.”  
Clarke just gives her the same searching look she always does and ruffles her hair before pulling her into a hug. Madi sinks into her arms gratefully, content to drop all the questions swimming around her mind just for the chance of a peaceful night with her sister  
“Here you go, Bug,” Clarke says after pulling away, taking a small box out of her pocket and handing it to the little alpha. “Didn’t want to give it to you in front of Mom.”  
Madi holds it up almost reverently and snaps it open to reveal an old-fashioned gold watch with a polished leather band.  
“Do you like it?” Her sister says with a toothy grin as she just stares at it speechless. “It was dad’s.”  
Madi’s jaw drops as she looks back up into her sister’s bright blue eyes.  
“Really?!”  
“Yes, really,” Clarke says, pointing a finger up to her lips to remind her to whisper. “He got it from _his_ grandfather, that’s how old it is. Treated it like crap though, you remember how absentminded he was.”  
Madi just nods despite the memory of her father before his illness growing dimmer with every year.  
“Yup, had to get it restored, got a new dial, new crystal, all those little bits and bobs that make it tick.”  
“H- how much was it?” Madi says before Clarke gives her that look that says ‘Don’t ask’. “Why didn’t you want me to open it in front of Momma?”  
“It’s nothing, I didn’t-” Clarke says, looking uncomfortable for a moment before deciding to be honest with her baby sister. “She- uhm, she wanted me to give it to Jake when he got older, but I… I just think since I had more time with him and Jake has his name, this is a piece of him you deserve for yourself.”  
Madi’s vision swims with tears before she wipes them with her sleeve and takes the watch out of the case to slide her hand through it at Clarke’s insistence. She takes one look at the shining crystal adorning her wrist and jumps into her sister’s arms.  
“Happy Birthday, Bug.”


End file.
